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Congress returns to packed budget agenda, tight deadlines

By
Jolie Lee

Congress has much to do in very little time. Legislators return to session this week with a few short
months to reach a budget resolution for the new fiscal year starting Oct. 1 and agree on how to avoid the
automatic spending cuts of $1.2 trillion over the next decade that will be triggered Jan. 2, 2013, under the
Budget Control Act debt limit deal.

On the budget resolution, the House has passed a fiscal 2013 budget plan proposed by Budget Committee
Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) that would freeze federal employees' pay through 2015, increase retirement
contributions and cut the federal workforce by 10 percent through attrition. The Senate is unlikely to take
up the resolution, however.

The likely scenario is more gridlock and more short-term spending measures until a new Congress takes
over, according to interviews conducted by Federal News Radio with budget analysts and federal employee
organizations.

"I think people underestimate the extent of work that the Congress is putting off every single day," said Steve Bell, senior director
of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Institute.

Between the budget resolution, appropriation bills and the debt ceiling deal, Congress has about three
years worth of work "if it's done right," Bell added. The deadline is even tighter considering election season
will put off any big decisions before November. Bell said he is skeptical of how much will be accomplished
after the election in the lame-duck Congress.

"Certainly if the sequester goes into effect, all this happy talk that people have about it being turned off
very quickly — by the new President, whomever is elected, and by the new Congress, whoever has
control of the House and Senate — I think it's just that. It's just happy talk," Bell said.

"I think people underestimate the extent of work that the Congress is putting
off every single day."

— Steve Bell, Bipartisan Policy Center

Beth Moten, legislative director of the American
Federation of Government Employees, said the question of sequestration is still "very much up in the
air." The election will determine the "sort of mood members of Congress are in when they come back from
that, whether they're in a mood to work out a compromise or whether they have the big fight," Moten said.

Bell described the challenge as a "human nature problem."

"This isn't a mechanical problem or an arithmetic problem," he said. "This is real people with real emotions
after really, really tough elections."

One possibility is that Congress allows the sequester to go into effect Jan. 2, and then the new Congress
takes up legislation to cancel sequestration early in 2013 "because you wouldn't feel [sequestration] until
the middle of the year," said Julie Tagen, legislative director for the National Active and Retired
Federal Employees Association, citing conversations she has had with legislators.

Robert Tobias, a
professor in the
Department of Public Administration and Policy at American University, said this scenario is a possibility.
"It's always an option for Congress to kick the can down the road," he said. "That's what they've been doing
for several years now."

What sequestration actually means for agencies is also unclear.

If the cuts do go into effect, the Office of Management and Budget will direct agencies to start planning for
the cuts. Agencies "may base these planning numbers on appropriations, and look at that versus the full
sequestration number," Tagen said.

Tobias said workforce cuts would be inevitable at most agencies. The timing of the cuts at the beginning
of January would come after one fiscal year has already passed. Tobias said, "By the time [the agencies]
would be able to conduct a reduction in force, another [fiscal] quarter would have passed." That means
agencies would have to implement even more furloughs or reductions than they otherwise would have to
do due to timing within the fiscal year.

Feds still targets for spending cuts, offsets

Federal employees' pay and benefits have been targeted in both stand-alone legislation and as provisions
in larger bills to offset costs.

"In some way, shape or form, I think the risk of something about pay or retirement or workforce reduction
is viable for them [lawmakers targeting federal pay and benefits] to attach to anything they see moving.
They sure do not seem to think that it has to be relevant to federal employees," said Colleen Kelley,
president of the National Treasury Employees Union.

"It's a level of hostility and mean-spiritedness toward federal employees and
federal employees' unions that is unprecedented."